A technique for electronically controlling a valve using feedback control such as PID (Proportional Integral Derivative) control has been known. The valves to be controlled by the technique include an engine's throttle valve and a cooling water valve, for example. During control of such a throttle valve, hysteresis could occur due to frictional resistance between parts of a control mechanism. Therefore, the problem is that a measured value of the control target does not reach a required target value. To solve such a problem, what has been known is a valve control device that corrects hysteresis at a time when a control volume calculated by a position feedback control side of the throttle valve increases or decreases in order to quickly and accurately control a drive mechanism of the control target having hysteresis friction from a measured value toward a required target value (Refer to Patent Document 1, for example).
Incidentally, as relevant technology, what has been known is a technique for calculating an elapsed time required for the temperature of water to change after energization of an actuator which is calculated by a controller in a cooling water temperature control system of an automobile engine, predicting a temperature that the water would reach after the elapsed time, and controlling the actuator in advance based on the predicted water temperature (Refer to Patent Document 2, for example). In this manner, this technique realizes a high level of trackability for the temperature of cooling water (Refer to Patent Document 2, for example).